


In another life

by kheradihr



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Allen Walker's lives make everything convoluted, F/M, Friendship is Magic, Gen, M/M, everyone loves Allen Walker in some form or fashion, it empowers you to fight wars against the war you're fighting, mentions of past lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-23
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-04-10 18:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4402220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kheradihr/pseuds/kheradihr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allen Walker has touched the lives of many people, whether in his current life or the other one so mysteriously referred to. Each chapter is a different character's exploration of the concept "In another life".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Road Camelot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Roseeater (eki_fuuten)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eki_fuuten/gifts).



Scattered to the ether, still reeling from the blow of Apocryphos, with the barest sense of self, I caught myself on a memory that I lost thirty-five years ago when my heart was torn from my chest. The memory was small and not of the Noah memory, the deep well that every Noah drinks from, the essence of our blood. It was my memory. A memory of a smile, curved gently on a moon-pale face, whose milky skin stood so stark against my dark skin. The memory was light, no -- _made_ of light. It was that light that kept me anchored there, triggering a call for the rest of me scattered. I curled around it and remembered the taste of him. Allen.

In another life.

That life, that existence nearly four decades ago, was glorious. I had Neah and Mana. I had Tikki, always solid for me to touch any time I wanted. More than all of that, I had Allen. He was mine. He was all of ours, so human and bright like the sun that cast our shadows long and wide. He knew us, the true nature that was underneath our pale masques, the darkness that dyed our skin. He knew from the first time he saw us and did not shrink away. Instead he kissed my knuckles, like one would do with a lady and not on the top of my hand as was the proper way to greet the girl of the body I inhabited. He pressed close to me, to Tikki, to Neah and Mana without fear. I remembered, as I am very slowly coalescing, like the birth of a star, his lips against our Noah's crown before leaving us for his duty.

He always came back. He said he couldn't be parted from us, from me, long.

In another life.

I would wake to his smile, the secret genuine thing saved only for his closest friends and loves -- he loved so much, I can remember that now. It's why we loved him in turn -- before going about my day in the life I lived to hide my identity. Sometimes I would find him in Tikki's bed, reading as Tikki slept on his chest. A finger would fly to his lips bisecting that loving smile before beckoning me to join them. Back then I could undress just as fast as I could transform and would be tucked to Allen's other side before he turned the next page. Somewhere in all of that I would drop off and when I woke it was to Tikki smiling up at Allen asleep with his neck at an impossible angle. That would start the laughter that immediately woke him up and then he would dive for the both of us. We never let him catch us immediately, it was part of the fun of the game.

When we encountered each other in our roles, he always had this twinkle in his eye because he knew the joke, was a part of the joke. That glimmer was what had him dancing with Tikki and Neah and even Mana, though Mana always tried to hang back when we coaxed him into coming to a party. Allen's friends, that man and woman whose souls were bonded together more than our own Bond Noahs, would laugh at Allen's antics and it made me wonder if we could be friends. Or at least allies.

In another life.

He sacrificed himself for Neah and I cried as I lost everyone. I was alone. Everyone gone, dead or shredded to tatters so unrecognizable I had to dream them a new face. Somewhere in my sorrow of being the only one left alive, left remembering, I let that bright moon-silver sun go. I shrouded myself in darkness and dreamed. When the next Noah woke, I woke and time had passed. Decades came and went. I woke to the new world and missing that pale skin until I saw it dancing for tips in a repeating city. I saw that love and everything in me screamed to go to him and press myself to him like he once did to me. Instead I played with him, with the woman and girl he smiled so readily at. I wanted to see that love on his face when he looked at me. That time he shrank away from my cruelty, horror and pain on his face. I drowned in that expression, drunk on pain to avoid drowning in my own. He didn't recognize me anymore.

In another life.

I kissed him. I couldn't kiss Tikki now with how much he was missing, like jagged empty holes where used to be beauty and desire. Besides, he wasn't fully Tikki, wearing a facsimile of Neah's face. Instead I teased both Allen and Tikki because I remembered remembering and I wanted to tease them into dancing again. Except now they dance with each other and splash blood on the floor instead of lust and laughter. It's enough though because we have Allen. It's what I told myself every time I held him. It always rings hollow.

In another life.

We would belong to each other, all of us. Your surly friend with more arrogance than Tikki would smile again. You and him would laugh and maybe you would get him to dance with you the same way you danced with his bond. I'm sure it would make her laugh. War would be a bad dream. The atrocities we made ourselves would be weapons of beauty. The words we have for each other would be friend, ally, maybe even lover.

In another life.

Allen is here. Allen is alive. I touched him, felt his warmth. I clung to him and tasted his breath. He called my name like he used to, with concern, frustration, even in a way that I could call love. He's the same, with that inexhaustible love that he bestows on everything and everyone. He's different. There are secrets in his eyes; something was able to darken eyes sun, moon, and stars bright. The Earl cried, heartbroken that he couldn't be with Allen. I can't. I won't.

I will slowly gather every piece of myself for him. For my family. I don't need another life to grasp what I love most. I have right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the story comes from references to another Allen, during Neah and Mana's time, who offered to help Neah. Theories between me and p_the_wanderer (who this is a gift for) led us to a horribly heartbreaking theory that Road and Tikki's affection for Allen are tied to potential memories from Neah's Allen. This theory also ties to Kanda's chapter.


	2. Kanda Yu

The night Kanda and Allen met was one of the worst nights of Kanda's second life after having to kill Alma. What he thought was an akuma turned out to be a face from his past, albeit younger and cursed. That face made the garden of lotus that perpetually surrounded him tremble with emotions he reserved for slaughtering akuma wholesale. Anticipation. Excitement, of all things. Each emotion the hundreds of lotus exhibited, he sharpened his temper on them. This was not his Allen, the man who always danced with Alma, swinging her about on the dance floor when they were supposed to be spying. His Allen knew when to be silent and let Kanda have a moment of peace as they waited for the doctors to let them see Alma, both of them sneaking out of their own rooms to be near her. His Allen offered his back to Kanda exactly at the moment he couldn't hold himself upright anymore. His Allen loved his hair. Just because he had his Allen's face, voice, even attitude, this bean sprout was not his Allen. Even so, when he and Allen got in each other's faces for whatever reason -- once it was because Kanda could hear Allen breathing -- the lotuses parted for Allen. The only other person they parted for was Lenalee.  
  
No matter the changes or the life, he still wanted to cut Allen.  
  
Alma and Lenalee would kill him if he did.  
  
After their first mission together, Kanda was determined to stay as far away from Allen as possible. The broken smile as that doll finally fell silent that crept out from Allen's hood had Kanda seeing another broken smile from another life. In that life, Allen was taller without the boyish lankiness and awkwardness of the child in front of him. His voice had been deeper and didn't sound so lost and alone when saying sad things. Unfortunately both Allens had that unfathomable depth of emotion.  
  
This time, Kanda managed to guillotine the words he said in a life he refused to revisit.  
  
_Your heart is going to get you killed, Allen!_  
  
But Allen still looked at him, that wan smile on that too-old face and replied, "I know."  
  
The frisson of emotion Kanda felt had the lotuses dancing wildly mimicking the storm in him. He had Allen in front of him. Not his Allen, he still told himself but an Allen hitting too close to home and sitting too close to his heart. He wanted to shake the bean sprout and shout at him until he realized that he was precious to others. Kanda wanted to tell him the things he didn't say to his Allen a lifetime ago when Allen told him of his obscene plan. Damn him and his damnable all-encompasing love. Kanda couldn't bear losing another Allen to this damned infinite war. Losing what he called a friend to the Noah again, it tore at him. Wasn't enough that he lost Alma twice? Did he have to lose Allen twice?  
  
Life whispered yes in the movement of lotus petals as blossoms gently cascaded over Allen's longer hair as he straightened after they sparred. At least he hadn't lost Lenalee yet. She was one of the only things that didn't repeat itself in this life from the previous. Even the way she tied Allen and him together was different from Alma. It was comforting as Allen slowly changed into something more ethereal and too familiar to Kanda. With those changes came Kanda losing his distance. He found himself smiling at Allen's clownish antics, wholly belonging to this Allen and not his. His Allen was lively and playful but never that acrobatic on one leg of a dinner chair. It made him sharper in his temper but slipping bad enough that Bookman was able to steal his hair tie. That luxury had once only belonged to Lenalee; before her, Alma and Allen.  
  
Learning that Allen was the Fourteenth rang wrong when he heard it. Allen couldn't be the Fourteenth. Allen wasn't his Allen lost in another life that tasted like stale ash. His Allen got entangled in the Noah because of his goddamned heart and died, leaving him and Alma to continue on with nothing but a lotus garden of dreams that too turned into trampled mud. This Allen that he now in the privacy of his own mind -- Lenalee spent too much time in his room now -- called a friend couldn't be a Noah. What felt more wrong was Allen asking everyone that if he changed to kill him.  
  
So he let his fear and pain sharpen the blade of his temper and he swore to kill Allen without hesitation. It kept them apart and Kanda was grateful. He didn't have to see Allen's sad smile, too similar to--No. He couldn't think about how much he hurt in that spot where he should have a heart.  
  
He failed. Alma survived and the Noah used him to wake Alma. On top of all of that Allen got his stupid, bean sprout self stuck in the middle of his fight with Alma. In his rage Kanda cut Allen and that was when he snapped out of the determination to die with Alma. Mugen was now glued to his hands with Allen's blood and Allen's skin was too dark, white hair shining moon-bright. But Allen was still frustratingly Allen so much that he risked everything including a gut-wound to let Kanda have one last chance to be with Alma. That was so much his Allen and this Allen that he had to call him by name before finding freedom.  
  
Freedom was fleeting, like always. That and even with Alma gone he knew both of them would give him that disapproving pout that drove him crazy. He had to go back. For Allen -- both of them, damn them and him -- for the others he had ties to by blood spilled and blood shared. Marie and Lenalee. His family. Mugen welcomed him gleefully, so willing to liquefy even in Lenalee's hand. He drank, willing to Fall for them all if it meant saving Allen.  
  
He lost Alma for good, now. He would not lose Allen.  
  
This time, this life hadn't demanded his life. Not yet. Though he was sure becoming a General of the Black Order was damned near enough.  
  
Tche. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said in Road's chapter, I have a pet theory about Neah's Allen and Allen Walker and with that came the idea that Neah's Allen also knew Kanda and Alma. Of course, this snowballed into the theory Neah's Allen being an Exorcist in the same unit as Kanda and Alma which fueled Kanda's issues with Allen in their new lives.


	3. Tikki Mykk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is quite a bit more graphic than the others but I don't want to up the rating for one potentially raunchy chapter. Please be aware there are clear references to sex that would be in line with a Mature rating. If you do not want to read this you can easily skip this chapter.

If we had another life, another time, boy, I would let you win everything in poker. You wouldn't need to cheat -- although you do it so well -- and I would offer my clothes, my belongings, my body to you and lose them joyfully. It would just be you and I in a bar or perhaps another train car. I would be wearing patched pants and an ill-fitting shirt because I don't want the armor of nobility to keep us apart. I am sure you'd find me in gentry finery gorgeous and a treasure to unwrap but for the first time, I want to lose to you in the way I originally did. I want to be in the form I prefer, a simple man with simple needs. My noble persona would require too much dissembling and coquetry. But you set such a stunning figure in your Exorcist blacks. Perhaps you and I could meet in a more formal setting; I'm sure you are equally adept at rendering me naked with your hands instead of cards.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Too much potential and I have so little time to tell you all of my desires. First the train car, then if we have time, a formal event, both of us in black.

You'd find me in a way similar to the way we met originally, you looking for something and I simply there, smiling with the smug assurance that I rule the world. My smile would grow wider as your lips twitched in irritation and soon enough our poker game would ensue. I wouldn't make things easy but I would enjoy losing first my shirt, my shoes, then eventually my pants until I wore nothing but my underwear. I'd notice you looking and position myself just so that you could see that I was enjoying being stripped. A hand or two later my underwear would be yours and nothing would hide my pleasure. That is when I lay down my biggest bet: myself. I would offer all of me for anything you want.

For once, you decided to be selfish and took my bet, won, and then finally, you grip my hair in your hands, tip my head back and plunder my mouth. Insistent and impatient for how slowly you conquered me, I'd unbutton your coat and shove it off of you as far as I could with your hands in my hair and gripping my shoulder.

I'd pull away from your lips, not because your inexperience -- oh, I recognize that you definitely shared kisses with an eclectic collection of lips even if you never kissed the same lips long enough to learn them -- but because I want to untie the bow around your neck with my teeth.

As if it were a collar holding you back, the moment it fell loose around your throat you pressed me down into the boxcar floor and explored what I offered as yours. I know you, so I know you would be thorough, discovering every part of me that heightened my pleasure and by extension, yours.

You would delve into me, still mostly dressed in your haste, making me writhe and beg for your full touch, not just for fingers but oh so deep full of all of you.

Eventually my lusts would be fulfilled with you, just perfect inside me as you gasp around my tightness, how hot I am inside. We'd move together in the beat more primal than the Noah rage fueling my kin and I would take a step away from that anger because of your smile in the pale moonlight that made you glow like a proverbial angel. We both know that is a lie and ignore it, utterly engrossed in each other.

In the end we both are satisfied and when I eventually mention us meeting in alternate circumstances later -- at a party, both of us dressed in our best and hiding our worst behind lying smiles -- you shut my words down because in the end we are different. The thoughts I have for us meeting at a formal event on the Continent and indulging ourselves are selfish and we cannot. We are on other sides of a war for the world. Where is lust, let alone love, in war?

Each of us, now sated, dress; you not looking at me and I unable to keep my eyes off of you as I find a new scratch, bruise, ache. I press each one to feel the pain echo pleasure like ghosts. Finally dressed, you lean in once more, making my suspenders stretch until I bend. Your lips are kind as you kiss me good bye. You are more practiced giving this kind of thing, wistful smile and final swipes of your tongue making the farewell sweeter than our shared orgasm. It reminds me of something that I cannot remember and for some reason I see Road's face sad as she whispers 'there's nothing there Tikki. Not anymore.' Without words we part, going separate paths.

For alas, you are Exorcist and I Noah.

So I ate your heart and you cut mine in two. I want to taste you again -- feel you inside me. Perhaps then I can regain that part of me you touched that doesn't exist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter definitely ties with Road's chapter so any references you notice are supposed to be there.


	4. Kanda and Alma

     In Martel, this place of crumbling past relics, Kanda remembered his past. His laughter echoed off the pillars not gone to sand and dust, full and vibrant with his entire memory. Alma moved against his left side, a crumbling smile curling his face.

     "I haven't heard you laugh like that in a long time. Wanna share with me?"

     Kanda pressed his face gently into Alma's hair. It felt like it always had, always would. No matter what body Alma had, the hair, eyes, and soul were the same. That knowledge hurt so much. Those three things stayed the same and yet Kanda hadn’t recognized, let alone remembered that. The fact that it was the same with Allen made everything worse. Hell, he thought, hopefully on the third time he’d do this right.

     “I was remembering."

     Alma laughed and the sound was brittle, cracking from the force of itself as small as it was. “Allen would be so sad it took you that long to remember him."

     “Not him — well, yes, him but I meant us. Alma—"

     “No. We had our time. Twice even. Now you need to be here for Allen. He’s so alone, Yu."

     “He does that to himself,” he growled.

     “As do you,” shot back Alma. He took a shuddering breath and Kanda could hear him breaking a little more. When would the breaking stop and Alma joined with the sand of this forsaken place? He hoped it would be after he couldn’t hear anymore. “Yu. Promise me…promise me something."

     Deja vu came and hit him like Lavi’s out of control hammer. No matter how many times he heard this, he answered the same way. “Anything."

     “Keep…keep living. You have more time and I don’t want you wasting it here.” His hand, now missing two fingers rested over Kanda’s heart and the sigil there.

     Kanda huffed and felt the cracks in his cheeks grow. “I don’t know about that, Alma. I don’t feel very alive."

     “That,” his voice teased, “is what it means to be mortal. Most get only one life, you’ve had as many as the lotus around us."

     “You see them?” Kanda turned too fast — his torso cracked and crumbled — and cupped Alma’s disintegrating cheeks. “You can see the lotus?"

     Tears streamed down Alma’s face and Kanda thought it unfair that it eroded his face instead of holding it together. “They’re so beautiful, Yu. You have so many. You’ll have to tell me about them sometime."

     “No, I’ll tell you now."

     He carefully, carefully tucked Alma to his side and curled an arm around and began to speak. And speak. And when he was out of words for the lotus he spoke about their time before and the life they had. He spoke about their Allen, the first one to blur the boundaries in this eternal war they were embroiled in. He spoke about this Allen and all his theories of second lives and rebirth. He spoke about everything he could think of until he had no words and no voice to speak them with.

      In Martel, this place of crumbling past relics, two dolls, beautiful despite, for, in their battered state sat shoulder to shoulder, hearts aligned, crumbling to join the sand. It trickled, the sound whispering things so lost they were secrets more esoteric than faith and science. For a moment, an eternity, there was silence; the sound of the absence of life. Then, for the last — finally, it is the last, I am so tired — time a heart beat.

     Life set the sand and lotus trembling.

     Another life to live for the final time.


	5. Alma, alone

     Hey Yu. You found him. Just like you found me. I can't be with you but stay close to Allen. He's our friend, then and now. He still needs someone to look after him or he'll get into too much trouble. You both feel so much, even if the emotions are often polar opposites.

     Don't frown at me, you know I'm right. And I know you love him, maybe not the same way you love me but just as much. You're capable of so much love when you let yourself. Lenalee, Marie? Loving them is good. It makes me not worry about you with them in your life.

     Hey Allen. I'm leaving our stubborn Yu with you. I know that's selfish but he can't follow me. It's better that he's with you. He shouldn't stagnate and you remind him to keep moving, even if it's in your direction with Mugen drawn. Just don't let him cut you, okay?

     I love you both. Live. Do it in a way that will make me smile.

     Maybe, if God is kind and we're all lucky, we -- yes, Allen, even the Noah -- can be together in the next life.


	6. Lenalee Lee

    As a child, Lenalee often played “What If”. It helped whittle away the hours she was experimented on, strapped to beds with her legs, though feeling light and free, aching with immobility. The games danced along the alternate realities where she was free, she never had Innocence, her brother was forever by her side, her parents never died. The games mostly ended when her brother tucked himself into her too narrow bed and brushed her hair, telling her a new story each time, whatever she wanted because big brother was here now and he would never let her be alone again. No matter how many lives they lost, he kept that promise.

     In another life Lenalee would be the one needing saving, she was a girl, after all. It was supposed to be the men saving the girl, that’s how all the stories went. But nothing ever happened the way it was supposedly supposed to be. The delicate glasslike jewels of her crystallized Innocence resting around her ankles were reminder of that. The hair ties Annie gave her, strung on a rope but too bulky to sit over her heart under her jacket, were reminders of that stark truth.

     And because of that, she donned her armor, bloody and dark so she could sink into the mire of politics, lies, and Innocence. She herself lacked innocence, true irony since she apparently carried the Heart of all Innocence. Not that she cared. As long as she could dive into the gore and terror and sin to pull those she cared about out, she would do almost anything.

     Even let Allen and Kanda go to face the world without friends by their sides. She was a soldier of the Order and she had her orders.

     But that was a lie too. Her orders were never her mission.

     If there was one thing a member of the Black Order knew it was to never get in the way of Lenalee and her mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lenalee is a treasure and I can't wait to watch her wreck shit (again).


	7. Noise Marie

     What almost everyone doesn’t know is that this life was Marie’s other life. He was destined to die and be used for the Second Exorcist project until a sopping wet child, desperate to survive shared blood with him.

     That shared blood shared life where he entertained others with his music, even managing to calm the dissonant symphony that was the sweet, anxious woman Miranda Lotte. It gave him a chance to viscerally feel Lenalee’s power as she danced on his wires in her Dark Boots, so light and gentle even as the smallest touch of her weight on the wires cut into the columns holding up a garden pavilion. That blood allowed him to cry laughing at Allen, beautiful, blindingly bright Allen, as he showed off some of his clowning skills. Blood shared gave him a life and a family he wouldn’t soon give up.

     So if that life was spent following the man that child became in his mission to save another very strange child, he was completely okay with that.


End file.
